Xero’s Nick Houldsworth drove the point home this year at Xerocon Brisbane with his session Recommending the right apps for your clients. Accounting partners who actively work with apps are growing their revenue up to 60% faster. Their SMB clients who are leveraging cloud apps are growing their net profitability 30% faster than those who aren’t. And crucially, clients want your help: you’re their #1 trusted source of business advice.

Heavily featured in Bryan Williams’s Retail and eCommerce breakout session, Xero Cloud Integrators (CIs) are experts in the app field and your one-stop-shop for advice. If you don’t yet feel confident enough on the app advisory journey, they’re here to help. They bring a level of technical and business expertise that some accounting and bookkeeping firms lack, and use this to help identify which app stack would best benefit you and your clients.

To help you on your journey towards app advisory success, Xero has released its App Playbook series: we have also produced a number of webinars – in conjunction with some of our top CIs – to further explain how to start bringing these services to your clients.

To make it even easier for our valued bookkeeping and accounting partners, CloudIntegration.Partners, a collaboration of some of our top CIs, have created an education camp, to take the first step to app advisory services for those at Level 1 of the journey:

This camp includes Xero-led talks on how to bring your own practice up to speed, how to recommend apps to your clients with confidence to collaborative activity breakouts that let you get a feel for the process of app advisory.

You’ll leave the day ready to start the journey with clients, whether you’re looking to recommend your first app or you’re keen to just strengthen your knowledge and polish your existing skills.

The ability to seamlessly move money has always been at the core of our economy. It enables the exchange of value, makes it possible to build new businesses, and fuels long-term growth. It’s been with us, in one form or another, since the very beginning of civilization. In 9000 BC, people traded grain, cattle, and jewels. A generation ago, people relied on cash, cheques and paper invoices. Today, we have credit cards and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay.

The technology underpinning money movement has changed, but the fundamental needs of business owners have remained consistent. There are four key things that all business owners want to know: How much money do I have? Who do I owe? Who owes me? Am I making a profit?

At Xero, we’re always working to help our customers answer these four questions quickly and easily, so they can make informed decisions about what is right for the business. One of the most important ways we do that is by continuing to strengthen our open platform and partnering with leading companies enabling our customers to access all of their data in one place.

Xero + Stripe: Helping Businesses Get Paid Faster

One of our most important global partners is Stripe, an innovative technology company that provides online payments processing for internet businesses. Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet and to help technology companies of every size build better and bigger businesses. The Stripe integration with Xero makes it easy for businesses to get paid faster because their customers can pay your invoices using their preferred credit or debit card. Find out how to add Stripe to your invoices here.

Last week, Xero’s Mary Buckley, Head of Financial Partnerships for the Americas, joined Jeanne DeWitt, Head of Sales at Stripe, to talk about the future of global payments on a panel at Stripe Sessions in San Francisco.

As Mary explained, “Xero’s primary focus has been to help small businesses understand how much money they have, what do they owe, what do others owe them and are they making a profit. Integrating with Stripe to help users manage payments, was a natural extension of our invoicing features to streamline the experience for business owners and their advisors.”

The Xero integration with Stripe provides small businesses with a way to send out invoices to their customers digitally, and offer the ability to pay via credit or debit card, or ACH credit. In doing so, a payer has more choice in how they make the payment and on average, merchants receive payments 10 days faster globally when a business uses Stripe. Xero automates reconciling any Stripe fees, saving time and money.

Stripe and Xero are committed to working together over the long-term to continuously improve the experience of their shared customers. As Stripe continues to invest in new product capabilities, Xero continues to explore new opportunities to deepen and expand the integration for the benefit of small businesses and their advisors.

Digital Payments Are Becoming a Baseline Customer Expectation

Digital payments are rapidly becoming the expected norm for all businesses. A recent Federal Reserve Study showed that while the use of commercial checks is declining by 3 percent annually, the use of card payments is growing by more than 7 percent each year. Even more importantly, the use of remote payments, such as those done over the internet, is increasing by nearly 16 percent, outpacing in-person payment growth of 8 percent. Another report shows that mobile payments have surged from 20 million users in 2015 to 144 million in 2017.

Xero is committed to working with partners like Stripe to make it easy for small businesses and their accountants to take advantage of leading edge payments technology. As Xero’s Mary Buckley puts it: “Our first job is to make it easy for businesses to adopt new payments technology. Doing so means that small businesses can get paid more quickly, and can unlock all insights that can come from payments data so that small businesses and their accountants can understand what’s happening inside their business and plan for long-term growth.”

By developing deeper customer and merchant experiences independently and in partnership, Xero is able to deliver an improved way of running a business, helping business owners to find deeper insights and more time to focus on the growth of their business.

The ability to seamlessly move money has always been at the core of our economy. It enables the exchange of value, makes it possible to build new businesses, and fuels long-term growth. It’s been with us, in one form or another, since the very beginning of civilization. In 9000 BC, people traded grain, cattle, and jewels. A generation ago, people relied on cash, cheques and paper invoices. Today, we have credit cards and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay.

The technology underpinning money movement has changed, but the fundamental needs of business owners have remained consistent. There are four key things that all business owners want to know: How much money do I have? Who do I owe? Who owes me? Am I making a profit?

At Xero, we’re always working to help our customers answer these four questions quickly and easily, so they can make informed decisions about what is right for the business. One of the most important ways we do that is by continuing to strengthen our open platform and partnering with leading companies enabling our customers to access all of their data in one place.

Xero + Stripe: Helping Businesses Get Paid Faster

One of our most important global partners is Stripe, an innovative technology company that provides online payments processing for internet businesses. Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet and to help technology companies of every size build better and bigger businesses. The Stripe integration with Xero makes it easy for businesses to get paid faster because their customers can pay your invoices using their preferred credit or debit card. Find out how to add Stripe to your invoices here.

Last week, Xero’s Mary Buckley, Head of Financial Partnerships for the Americas, joined Jeanne DeWitt, Head of Sales at Stripe, to talk about the future of global payments on a panel at Stripe Sessions in San Francisco.

As Mary explained, “Xero’s primary focus has been to help small businesses understand how much money they have, what do they owe, what do others owe them and are they making a profit. Integrating with Stripe to help users manage payments, was a natural extension of our invoicing features to streamline the experience for business owners and their advisors.”

The Xero integration with Stripe provides small businesses with a way to send out invoices to their customers digitally, and offer the ability to pay via credit or debit card, or ACH credit. In doing so, a payer has more choice in how they make the payment and on average, merchants receive payments 10 days faster globally when a business uses Stripe. Xero automates reconciling any Stripe fees, saving time and money.

Stripe and Xero are committed to working together over the long-term to continuously improve the experience of their shared customers. As Stripe continues to invest in new product capabilities, Xero continues to explore new opportunities to deepen and expand the integration for the benefit of small businesses and their advisors.

Digital Payments Are Becoming a Baseline Customer Expectation

Digital payments are rapidly becoming the expected norm for all businesses. A recent Federal Reserve Study showed that while the use of commercial checks is declining by 3 percent annually, the use of card payments is growing by more than 7 percent each year. Even more importantly, the use of remote payments, such as those done over the internet, is increasing by nearly 16 percent, outpacing in-person payment growth of 8 percent. Another report shows that mobile payments have surged from 20 million users in 2015 to 144 million in 2017.

Xero is committed to working with partners like Stripe to make it easy for small businesses and their accountants to take advantage of leading edge payments technology. As Xero’s Mary Buckley puts it: “Our first job is to make it easy for businesses to adopt new payments technology. Doing so means that small businesses can get paid more quickly, and can unlock all insights that can come from payments data so that small businesses and their accountants can understand what’s happening inside their business and plan for long-term growth.”

By developing deeper customer and merchant experiences independently and in partnership, Xero is able to deliver an improved way of running a business, helping business owners to find deeper insights and more time to focus on the growth of their business.

Over the last three months Xero’s been running XDHax, our virtual developer hackathon, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). With some sweet prizes up for grabs, we challenged hackers to build an app that could benefit small businesses around the globe.

All of the submissions we received were of a high quality and we were thrilled to see the ways teams innovated on our platform. The judges had to work overtime to choose the top submissions.

Let’s take a look at the winners of the best app categories:

For Best App – APAC

Winner: Custom D

Custom D, a web development company with offices in both Australia and New Zealand, built Dirty Bach a mobile app for cleaners that syncs seamlessly with Xero.

Josh Smith, Web Developer at Custom D, says the team are old hands at web-based Xero integrations but Dirty Bach marks it’s first mobile-only app.

“Dirty Bach evolved from observing a cleaner organising her work. We wanted the app to provide super fast, and simple billing and scheduling for cleaners while still being intuitive and uncomplicated. It was built with React Native, which enabled us to easily reach both Apple iOS and Android device users. We think this is the ideal tool for owner operators and are hugely proud the app and stoked that our efforts have been noticed by the XDHax judges.”

For Best App – EMEA

Winner: Jemcode

Jemcode, a UK based app development and design company, built InView which makes it easier for businesses to manage their cash flow by allowing businesses to sync invoices and bills from Xero to desktop and mobile calendars.

Rikki Pitt, founder at Jemcode, was inspired to build InView following challenges he noticed as a small business owner.

“As a business owner that uses Xero, I found it tricky to keep track of my client payments. Not knowing who to chase or what is outstanding can lead to cash flow problems and I wanted an option to automate the process of adding Xero information to my calendar. The app is built on Ruby on Rails and I’m particularly proud of the calendar caching process I devised to boost performance. XDHax presents an exciting opportunity to really challenge yourself to come up with innovative and creative solutions and I’m thrilled to have won the EMEA competition.”

From the judges

Dan Young, Head of Developer Platform at Xero, led the XDHax judging, “We were excited to have such a difficult decision in choosing the winners from the apps submitted as it shows the calibre of developer talent out there. Both winners – Dirty Bach and InView really demonstrate a strong appreciation for the spirit of the hackathon,”

“Dirty Bach fills a real gap in the Xero ecosystem and does so in a fun way. They should be congratulated on their ability to build not just mobile-first but mobile-only. InView presents a really strong entrant to our app marketplace and offering a small but powerful improvement to the way an organisation can view and edit events in calendars outside of Xero.”

Both winners were awarded US$5,000 prize money, and will be given the opportunity to showcase their app to Xero’s community with an entry-level exhibitor space at a future Xerocon. The runners-up were awarded USD$2,500 each.

If you’re feeling inspired, and want to find out how you can get in front of Xero’s 1.4 million global subscribers and 100,000 plus advisors, check out our API documentation, ‘how to’ guides and how to become a Xero app partner. To all submissions, a huge thanks from the Xero ecosystem team.

If you have trade and construction clients, you’ll know how busy their days can be. Some are so bogged down with paperwork, they find it impossible to fit into their workday. So to compensate they burn the midnight oil, or give up their weekends to ensure staff and invoices are paid on time. Sound familiar? These clients are often crying out for better efficiency, but many are in the dark about how to improve their processes.

That’s where you come in. By recommending the right apps you can put your clients on the path to success, while removing their admin headaches. In this blog, I’ll cover some of the common challenges to running a successful trade and construction business and how apps can help. Plus, I’ll cover some key announcements from my recent talk at Xerocon Brisbane that will help you get started with recommending the right apps to your trade and construction clients.

Trade and construction challenges

Running a trade and construction business can be demanding. As well as the need to improve work-life balance and manage admin smarter, trade and construction clients often need help with understanding profitability and improving their workflows.

For your clients to maximise profit, they need a more detailed view of their business than the bottom line alone. By being able to view time spent on each individual job, plus their customers, debtors and suppliers, your client gains a much better understanding of how profitable they are, and what levers are available to them to improve profitability.

Many trade and construction businesses use subcontractors, making workflows increasingly complicated as the number and type of employees vary from project-to-project. Paper-based systems can’t keep up, making managing these type of jobs even more challenging.

So how can you help?

With the right Xero-integrated apps, it’s easier and faster for your clients to quote, invoice and accept payment. This not only gives them their evenings and weekends back, but also helps them become more profitable and reach their goals. At the same time, you can strengthen your suite of advisory services to grow your practice’s revenue.

“Many of the clients who come to us are running paper-based systems with lots of duplication.” said Diana Siddall, Cloud Advisor at AccountsConnect. “Once we get clients set up with the right software their efficiency greatly improves. With the right apps, communication becomes easy and because everyone in the business has access to the same real-time information, they’re all on the same page.

“With the right apps, clients can access this real-time information and run their business on the go, via their smartphone. For example, it’s possible to invoice onsite. This gives these clients so much more time back in their day so when they get home they can ‘turn off’, which is great for their work life balance. With online payment facilities set up, they can get paid faster too.”

How you can start implementing app advisory for trade and construction

You may already be recommending apps to your clients. Or if you’re like roughly half of Xero advisors, you want to get started, but you don’t know where to begin. No matter where you are on your journey, we want to make it easier for you to build a repeatable, scalable process to successfully deliver app advisory.

With that in mind, we’ve just launched our Xero U course for Trade and Construction. On this course, you’ll learn how to profile your clients’ needs and find the right app for their business, with help from case studies and comparison matrices, so you can recommend apps with confidence.

We’ve also introduced a Xero U course, specifically focused on learning the fundamentals of app advisory. It will show you the steps, to bring app advisory into your practice and make it work for your unique goals and resources.

Earlier this year we introduced Xero’s app playbook series, including our app advisory and trade and construction playbooks. The Xero U courses builds upon the content in these playbooks. So if you haven’t read them yet, I recommend you take a look at them today. They’re a great stand alone resource and can also be used as reference after you have finished the Xero U courses.

Gaining your trade and construction industry specialist badge

Once you complete thetrade and construction coursein Xero U you’ll receive an industry specialist badge on your advisor directory profile. As long as your practice has three clients tagged within the industry, including at least one client using a trade and construction app, your practice will also be awarded a trade and construction specialist badge. So you can start reaching new clients and growing your practice’s revenue.

You may have also heard about our new in-app marketplace experience available via Xero HQ Explorer. This provides you with four tailored app recommendations for each of your clients, based on their industry, helping make choosing the right apps for your trade and construction clients even easier.

These new resources, combined with your expertise and skills, can help you successfully build app advisory services into your practice, while enabling your trade and construction clients to run smarter, more profitable businesses – without the late night admin. We hope they help you on your journey to success with app advisory.

Our app marketplace has over 700 apps to help small businesses and their advisors reach their goals. Each month we celebrate an app partner who really stands out for helping small businesses thrive, by taking a look at a recent success story.

Our app partner of the month for September goes to Tanda

Started by four university friends, Tanda was initially created to manage staffing headaches at the not-for-profit the team were running at their university, spanning hospitality, retail and administration. After realising its potential to help other business, in a just short few years Tanda has expanded from Australia, into the UK, US and Europe and grown to employ over 140 staff.

We spoke with Co-founder, Tasmin Trezise about how the Tanda team has helped thousands of global businesses streamline their staffing operations, while forging their own success story.

How Tanda came to fruition

“When we took over running the university organisation it had over 100 casual staff and we were managing everything with paper and excel. Rostering was all over the place, there were problems with payroll and the business was losing 800k a year,” Tasmin said.

Eager to get off paper-based systems for workforce management and rostering, the team went in search of a software solution, but nothing on the market was the right fit for their workforce. And being a non-profit, they didn’t want to waste any student money. So they built the software they needed themselves. And the results have been huge. The business finished the year with a 200k surplus – a turn around of one million dollars from the previous year.

“Our initial goal was to make it easier to employ and pay staff. But one of the biggest benefits from implementing our software was a more engaged and productive workforce. Staff were happier because they were getting paid correctly, on-time, and timesheets were faster. That’s when we realised the impact our software could have for other businesses too,” Tasmin said.

From solving one business’ challenges to global expansion

Since, Tanda has grown from 0 to 140 staff on the payroll over a four year period with no external funding. It’s also expanded into the UK, US and Europe.

“Internally, we are committed to making our people as successful and productive as possible. We see that as our responsibility and first and foremost, our staff are our number one customer. While our software is constantly changing, this ethos in our business, which we coined as ‘workforce success’, stays concrete and has been a big part of our success. It’s also what we’re helping our customers achieve by using our software,” Tasmin said.

Streamlining workforce management with the right tools

“When you start using the right processes, it’s possible to achieve so much more in a business. One of the quickest ways to annoy an employee is to pay them late or incorrectly. Companies need the right systems in place to get this right, and recent wage scandals in Australia highlight just how important this is. Our software helps companies ensure they are being compliant and paying staff accurately. But it’s about more than that. It’s about increasing employee engagement and productivity as well,” Tasmin said.

At Xerocon Brisbane this month, Tanda released an exciting new feature, to make staffing decisions even easier. Live wage tracker is an industry first that allows employers to know exactly how much they are spending on wages in real-time, without waiting to the end of a payroll period. The information is all award costed, with compliance and penalty rates factored in.

“Labour is the most expensive, but usually the highest producing and most valuable asset that a business has. So the ability to see this live can be game changing for customers. It makes under and over staffing a thing of the past, so businesses can make better staffing decisions,” Tasmin said.

Benefits of partnering with Xero

Through connecting with Xero, Tanda has been able to reach more customers with their solution and provide even greater benefits.

“Being part of the Xero ecosystem has been huge for us. It makes so much sense for people to use Xero and Tanda together and has allowed us to offer a bigger and better solution to our customers. Through our partnership with Xero and access to a wealth of other apps, we’re enabling businesses to succeed at a faster pace and creating more efficient ways for them to run their businesses,” Tasmin said.

So where to next for Tanda?

“We’re working on some pretty exciting product developments, building on our existing artificial intelligence tools to assist in workforce planning. For example, looking at how rosters can be built and analysed with machine learning, factoring in things like foot traffic, sales, demand.

“We’ve spent the last few years focused on building a leading workforce technology solution. So now our focus is also on making more people aware of Tanda and how it can help their business streamline workforce management and make better staffing decisions, for a more productive workforce,” Tasmin concluded.

Find out how an integration with Tanda and Xero can help you get the most out of your workforce here.

Our app marketplace has over 700 apps to help small businesses and their advisors reach their goals. Each month we celebrate an app partner who really stands out for helping small businesses thrive, by taking a look at a recent success story.

Our app partner of the month for September goes to Tanda

Started by four university friends, Tanda was initially created to manage staffing headaches at the not-for-profit the team were running at their university, spanning hospitality, retail and administration. After realising its potential to help other business, in a just short few years Tanda has expanded from Australia, into the UK, US and Europe and grown to employ over 140 staff.

We spoke with Co-founder, Tasmin Trezise about how the Tanda team has helped thousands of global businesses streamline their staffing operations, while forging their own success story.

How Tanda came to fruition

“When we took over running the university organisation it had over 100 casual staff and we were managing everything with paper and excel. Rostering was all over the place, there were problems with payroll and the business was losing 800k a year,” Tasmin said.

Eager to get off paper-based systems for workforce management and rostering, the team went in search of a software solution, but nothing on the market was the right fit for their workforce. And being a non-profit, they didn’t want to waste any student money. So they built the software they needed themselves. And the results have been huge. The business finished the year with a 200k surplus – a turn around of one million dollars from the previous year.

“Our initial goal was to make it easier to employ and pay staff. But one of the biggest benefits from implementing our software was a more engaged and productive workforce. Staff were happier because they were getting paid correctly, on-time, and timesheets were faster. That’s when we realised the impact our software could have for other businesses too,” Tasmin said.

From solving one business’ challenges to global expansion

Since, Tanda has grown from 0 to 140 staff on the payroll over a four year period with no external funding. It’s also expanded into the UK, US and Europe.

“Internally, we are committed to making our people as successful and productive as possible. We see that as our responsibility and first and foremost, our staff are our number one customer. While our software is constantly changing, this ethos in our business, which we coined as ‘workforce success’, stays concrete and has been a big part of our success. It’s also what we’re helping our customers achieve by using our software,” Tasmin said.

Streamlining workforce management with the right tools

“When you start using the right processes, it’s possible to achieve so much more in a business. One of the quickest ways to annoy an employee is to pay them late or incorrectly. Companies need the right systems in place to get this right, and recent wage scandals in Australia highlight just how important this is. Our software helps companies ensure they are being compliant and paying staff accurately. But it’s about more than that. It’s about increasing employee engagement and productivity as well,” Tasmin said.

At Xerocon Brisbane this month, Tanda released an exciting new feature, to make staffing decisions even easier. Live wage tracker is an industry first that allows employers to know exactly how much they are spending on wages in real-time, without waiting to the end of a payroll period. The information is all award costed, with compliance and penalty rates factored in.

“Labour is the most expensive, but usually the highest producing and most valuable asset that a business has. So the ability to see this live can be game changing for customers. It makes under and over staffing a thing of the past, so businesses can make better staffing decisions,” Tasmin said.

Benefits of partnering with Xero

Through connecting with Xero, Tanda has been able to reach more customers with their solution and provide even greater benefits.

“Being part of the Xero ecosystem has been huge for us. It makes so much sense for people to use Xero and Tanda together and has allowed us to offer a bigger and better solution to our customers. Through our partnership with Xero and access to a wealth of other apps, we’re enabling businesses to succeed at a faster pace and creating more efficient ways for them to run their businesses,” Tasmin said.

So where to next for Tanda?

“We’re working on some pretty exciting product developments, building on our existing artificial intelligence tools to assist in workforce planning. For example, looking at how rosters can be built and analysed with machine learning, factoring in things like foot traffic, sales, demand.

“We’ve spent the last few years focused on building a leading workforce technology solution. So now our focus is also on making more people aware of Tanda and how it can help their business streamline workforce management and make better staffing decisions, for a more productive workforce,” Tasmin concluded.

Find out how an integration with Tanda and Xero can help you get the most out of your workforce here.

It’s National Payroll Week in the UK – an initiative organised by the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP). It aims to demonstrate the importance of efficient payroll to the economy.

Payroll is crucial in business management and employee satisfaction. If payroll processes are locked down and run well, businesses will flourish.

If they’re not, payroll can be an administrative nightmare, shifting the focus away from what business owners love doing. Whether you are an accountant acting on behalf of your client, or a small business owner managing the payroll yourself, here’s how the right payroll software can help:

For accountants:

Payroll management has historically been the bain of an accountant’s life. They know their clients don’t want to get employee wages wrong. By combining a smart payroll system like Xero Payroll with Xero, it’s far easier to get the job done efficiently, and quickly.

Xero Me is an employee app that works with Xero Payroll. You can track time, mark holidays on a calendar and populate payslips. It’s not difficult to sell the benefits of the app to your clients – not only is the user experience seamless, but they gain the satisfaction of having all their important information in one place. It also means employees and employers benefit from more detailed reporting of their day-to-day activities.

There’s no need to manually input data from other spreadsheets. By using payroll software that automatically integrates with your accounting software, you don’t have to keep track of all the changes your team make or post journals.

There are a number of Xero partners saving time with Xero Payroll. Take Xero Gold Partner, David Hassel, Managing Director of DH Business Support and co-owner of XU Magazine. Xero Payroll has saved his firm twelve minutes per client per month. He’s reduced the time spent on admin tasks that detract attention away from helping the businesses he works with thrive.

As David explains: “When it comes to small businesses we don’t just want to give people a history lesson every year – we want to give them actionable insights that affect their business decisions moving forward. If you have the right data, you can tackle underlying issues within the company. It’s our job to make sure our clients really understand what’s happening so that they can move forward and build great businesses.”

Elsewhere, Danielle Cole, director at accounting practice, Whiting & Partners, commented on how Xero Payroll is helping the team: “Xero sorts everything, so there is nothing more for us to do at the end of the year. That saves us two hours per client compared to the system we used before. Clients love the paperless payslips and for me it’s easy to send them. I just press a button and off they go.”

For the small business owner:

Let’s be honest, you didn’t start your business just so you could spend time on admin tasks and payroll problems. Every spare moment that you have in the office should be spent on driving your business offering forward.

You really don’t want to get employee wages wrong. It’s the type of reputation that spreads fast and could cause problems when a business is hiring new people. It doesn’t bode well for employee satisfaction, not to mention the fact that it will cause you a headache to clear up the mess.

To avoid this, ensure you stay on top of leave, timesheets and payslips. Ideally, everything needs to be in the same format and the same place. If they’re tracked in different spreadsheets and google docs, it’s easy for things to get missed.

Using an app like Xero Me gives the satisfaction of having all the important information in one place. Employees submit their own timesheets, check their pay and manage leave requests – all from their smartphones. Aside from it being good for your employees, it’s good for business, too.

The great thing is that it reduces the amount of administration that businesses need to do. All the information that you need is accounted for, and as such is going to be more accurate, with less chance of employees being under or overpaid. Make sure you are aware of any regional laws around minimum pay periods – if you’re in the dark about this, you might end up breaking a law that you weren’t aware of.

Using an app likes Xero Me takes the hassle out of payroll by collating all the information you need and organising it in one place. Take a look here to find out more.

As we kick off two amazing days in Brisbane, we want to congratulate our Xerocon award winners. These annual awards recognise excellence across the bookkeeping and accounting industries, as well as among our third-party app developers.

Congratulations to all of this year’s Asia Pacific winners. They demonstrated passion and hard work as they dedicated themselves to helping small businesses thrive.

Accounting Partners of the Year: Australia, New Zealand and Asia

These awards commend an exceptional accounting practice in each of the three regions that uses Xero to offer continual value and innovation to clients.

RBK in Melbourne has seen its advisory business surge since a few accountant friends launched the firm three years ago. It’s grown from 300 clients to well over 2,000 in the last year and has seen revenue grow 400 percent. RBK does all work in progress and billing through Xero Practice Manager. Xero’s integrations with RBK’s practice tools allow the firm to focus more on advisory and get less bogged down in compliance work.

This Waikato-based firm is a team of seven that lives by the philosophy of challenging their clients and themselves in the pursuit of excellence. Maisey Harris offers an extensive workshop programme, as well as a range of business services such as KPI improvement and financial awareness coaching, to break the mould of traditional accounting services and help clients develop a competitive advantage

SBA is a network of franchises with 87 branches across New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific and the United States. It’s been around for 20 years and in that time has proven its services are among some of the best. SBA franchisees are small business accounting, bookkeeping, tax and payroll specialists, and use the latest technology to provide every client with a tailor-made program.

As one of Australia’s leading accounting firms and a Xero platinum partner, Deloitte has gone from strength to strength. Its growth can be attributed to the accelerated effort to migrate their entire client base to cloud technology. Delivering a consistently high standard of competency and education to their clients, Deloitte ensures they all get the full benefits of the cloud as they work with best-in-class apps that integrate with Xero.

Asia Partner of the Year joint winners:

Agere Accounting & Advisory has been a pioneer of cloud accounting in Singapore since 2011, when SaaS was in its infancy. Its founder, Elaine Lim, has the distinction of building two successful Xero practices, and her latest enterprise has achieved platinum partner status. The business community recognises the Agere team as passionate, business-minded and technologically savvy.

Fresh Accounting is based in both Hong Kong and Singapore and has been a Xero partner for over five years. As well as running the firm 100 percent in the cloud, Fresh teams up with Xero app partners to deliver a full range of business solutions. Thanks to the flexibility of being in the cloud, Fresh is able to hire parents returning to the workforce to join the team, and is proud to do so.

Mazars is a global firm of over 900 partners. Mazars first embraced Xero in early 2012 and says the response from their clients has been overwhelmingly positive. Clients range from local startups to multinationals, but the common goal at Mazars is multi-country engagement, to support and drive cross-border growth for their clients. Mazars prides itself on operating a truly global model, rather than focusing just on tax compliance and annual reporting. Xero allows Mazars to provide a range of services to clients based in more than one location using the same ledger.

Bookkeeping Partners of the Year: Australia and New Zealand

This award recognises firms from the exceptional community of bookkeeping partners who use Xero to add value to their service in their evolving industry.

This firm hails from the national capital, Canberra. It specialises in making entrepreneurship and starting and running a small business as painless and streamlined as possible. Using Xero Tax, Business Boost Centre has achieved over 95 percent of lodgements on time without using the BAS agent extension period. “That means happy and less stressed clients with no late lodgement fees,” says small business advisor Don Grgic. “We have better things to do than chase information and request lodgement extensions.”

This mobile service specialises in premium bookkeeping and accountancy solutions. With locations around the country, GoFi8ure offers services for businesses of many sizes – from sole traders and startups to small and medium businesses. Services range from bank and GST reconciliations to management accounting, payroll and reporting. The GoFi8ure team has more than 70 years’ combined experience in various accounting disciplines, making them a trusted advisory firm.

100% Xero Award

This award recognises a practice that goes above and beyond to champion cloud accounting. By operating entirely on Xero, it demonstrates the value of the apps ecosystem every day.

Robot was one of the first accounting practices in Asia to adopt Xero back in 2014. The team was committed to take the practice into the cloud, and reached gold partner status with Xero within two years. All Robot staff work from home and service clients globally.

Robot is a huge advocate of automation and education. It uses apps from Xero’s marketplace to introduce clients to tools that streamline day-to-day processes. They also pride themselves on making sure their clients are well equipped to use Xero and make the most of the information it provides to make better business decisions.

Emerging App Partner of the Year

This award recognises an up-and-coming app partner who demonstrates success through a commitment to design, customer service and technological innovation.

The Wedeploy app allows a business to fill staffing positions in seconds, not hours. It offers clients unlimited access to a pool of vetted business support staff to take care of admin tasks so clients can focus on what matters. With a focus on product and intuitive platform, Weploy allows almost anybody to get the staff they need, when they need it.

App Partner of the Year

Our ecosystem of app partners empowers small businesses to be their best. This award celebrates exceptional quality of service and continuous improvement, and this year, Deputy took the honours.

Deputy offers scheduling, time-clocking and staff communication to small businesses in all Xero regions. Along with helping small businesses to better manage staff working flexible hours, payroll, award rates, and keeping staff in the loop, Deputy removes the mundane work and headaches associated with organising shift work, streamlining business processes.

Industry-Specific App Partner of the Year

Xero is supported by more than 700 powerful add-on apps and this award commends an app partner who has showed exceptional success in a particular industry. This year, AccountKit took the accolade.

The AccountKit app comprises a suite of tools to assist accountants with the administration, compliance and advisory areas of their practice. AccountKit centralises client and administration information into one location that can easily be accessed by all staff. It assists in many areas of a practice, from administration and compliance to broader consulting.

Every year at Xerocon, we announce more features, resources and tools, to help you thrive on our platform and ensure success for you and your small business clients. In my recent talk at Xerocon Brisbane, I highlighted our latest investments to put you on the path to success with recommending apps to your clients. If you missed it, here’s a quick recap of the highlights.

The opportunity and the challenges

Xero’s ecosystem of apps has created even greater opportunities to grow your advisory services and put yourself in the virtual CFO seat.

Practices who leverage apps for their own business and clients’ businesses are more efficient and grow revenue faster, but over half of our partners aren’t sure how to get started. We hear they are overwhelmed by the sheer range of solutions and need better training on how to start.

So we’re excited to announce a number product updates and new initiatives to help our partners get on this journey.

Certifying for quality and customer value

The market for small business software has exploded in recent years. But every application that joins the Xero marketplace is vetted by one of our Developer Evangelist team, ensuring each app meets a minimum certification standard to be integrated with Xero and wear the Connected App badge.

With 700+ apps in the marketplace, we recently added new tiers to our App Partner Program, based on the number of Xero customers, growth, plus the reviews and ratings each app has. Keep an eye out for apps displayed as “featured” on our marketplace. These are the preferred and recommended partners in our app partner program, giving you even greater assurance of the quality and popularity of some of our most well-known app partners.

Tailored recommendations by customer industry

We’ve just released a new Xero in-app marketplace experience, so we can provide tailored app recommendations for clients based on their industry. This helps narrow down selection even further, providing solutions that address industry-specific customer needs. We’ve also made this available via Xero HQ explorer, so you can quickly find recommendations for your clients in, say, retail or construction industries.

We’re also providing richer information on our app marketplace so you can see exactly how data flows between Xero and each 3rd party app.

Bringing app advisory into your practice

Earlier this year, we launched our app playbook series, showing you how to bring the fundamentals of app advisory into your practice and recommend apps for our three biggest industries: trade and construction, retail and ecommerce, and professional services. Our playbooks were so popular, we’ve built on this content and created two great new resources.

The app advisory course is designed to arm you with the knowledge to begin your app advisory journey and feel confident recommending apps to your clients. You’ll all be at different points on your app advisory journey and there’s no one size fits all approach. The course details three levels of advisory so you can choose the right one for your practice.

With the trade and construction Xero U course you’ll learn how to profile your clients’ needs and find the right app for their business, with help from case studies and comparison matrices, so you can recommend apps with confidence. We have other industry courses coming soon, so stay tuned!

Get recognised for your skills

Now you have the tools to start implementing app advisory, we want to make sure you get recognised for your skills, so you can grow your practice and reach new clients.

Introducing the new Xero advisor industry listing

Once you complete an industry course in Xero U you’ll receive an industry specialist badge on your advisor directory profile. As long as your practice has three clients tagged within that industry, including at least one client using an industry app, your practice will also be awarded an industry specialist badge. The first course we’ve launched is trade and construction and we’ll be adding more industry courses soon.

In addition, we also want to recognise your experience with individual apps. Once you’ve got over three clients connected to one app, you’ll be shown side-by-side on that app’s regional listing in our app marketplace.

So where do you begin?

I encourage you to check out all of the new tools and resources I’ve introduced in this blog. Enroll yourself or your chosen staff members in our new Xero U courses and trade and construction Xero U course, if that’s an area you specialise in. Then, with help from insights from our new marketplace and Xero HQ functionality, you can get started recommending apps. Next, get recognised and reach new clients with our Xero Advisor Directory.

We hope these steps will set you on the path to success with app advisory, so with your knowledge, combined with our new tools and resources, you can add greater value to your clients and your practice.

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